


One Step, Two Step

by Mogseltof



Series: SkyStar Week 2020 [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst, Battle, Betrayal, Changed Relationship, Coping, Grief, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Missing in Action, Sandbox AU, SkyStar Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:35:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26212768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mogseltof/pseuds/Mogseltof
Summary: SkyStar Week 2020!To lose a love is a tragedy. To get them back is a miracle. To have them...? How tight can you hold onto someone?
Relationships: Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers), implied Megatron/Starscream
Series: SkyStar Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903714
Comments: 21
Kudos: 32
Collections: SkyStar Week 2020





	1. Flight Prep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 1: Hope/Grief

The signal was so faint. Starscream knew it was the interference from the pressure of ice, snow, and possibly even dirt or rock. Primus; if they’d been doing this processing at the ice caps on the northern pole he could have just  _ melted _ the whole damn thing--

But no. They’d needed the presence of the planet’s crust to appropriately measure the density. Too much sodium in the damn water; it had been interfering with the calibrations. It had to be southern caps. 

Starscream dully watched his chronometer tick over again on his HUD and fired the mechanism to open the shutters on his optics. He had to go or he was going to have to wait another full cycle to launch correctly and break atmosphere at the correct trajectory. He’d already pushed the time it was going to take to get back to Cybertron recklessly far; if Skyfire was going to be the one flying they still should have left a full eight cycles ago. Starscream’s journey would take even longer, if he even survived. He’d had the necessary upgrades to ensure he could push that far, but there was a chance that leaving the atmosphere would kill him without the advantage of the  _ forged _ heat resistant plating of an exploratory shuttle. 

He would be leaving everything behind. Energon seekers weren’t onlined with storage hulls, only sampling systems. He wouldn’t even have their work to show for it, only unverified numbers and a couple of vials of minerally interesting  _ dirt _ . 

The systems that were attempting valiantly to triangulate anything from Skyfire’s signal disappeared from his HUD as Starscream transformed into root mode, folding the modified sensory arrays beneath his reinforced plating. Would the Academy demand his reformatting when they dragged him down for this colossal failure?

Starscream couldn’t bring himself to care. All of his attention was locked on the faint blinking of the dot in the top corner of his HUD, the only symbol that Skyfire was still online somewhere under this bleak plain of ice. He let the launch systems run on automatic, felt his landing gear disengage as the code that diverted the extra power that his thrusters needed for him to take to the air on this rock so overburdened with an excess of gravity. The dot got even fainter as his never before used shielding protocols onlined and slid new shutters over every exposed and sensitive part of his frame. 

He remembered Skyfire’s subtle smile and the comments about how they’d have to keep them shiny and new, that Starscream’s preferred nanite scrubs and wax polishes wouldn’t do much for the scorch marks of an atmospheric entry. How it wouldn’t matter because Skyfire was going to be bearing all of that if they came to a planet where it mattered anyway. 

Starscream’s flight path reached the requisite speed he needed to free himself of this toxic pit of a planet and he diverted sharply up, every single piece of code attached to his emotional processor going haywire as Skyfire’s life signal disappeared from his HUD. He terminated every single query response that returned with a ruthless determination, his engines screaming with loss and anger and the effort required for this physical feat his frame had never been meant to accomplish. 

The heat was so incredible that it penetrated through even the new shielding, making his internal cooling systems activate, the pressurised nitrogen flooding the tubes. As he broke free of the grip the planet had on him Starscream wondered faintly if his new scorch marks would rest in the same places of his frame that Skyfire’s had. 


	2. Adjustments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2: Regrets/Memories

Skyfire had always known Starscream was a… bitter, complicated person who was prone to wandering down dark paths. It was easier when they’d known each other Before to be patient with that, to gently prod at Starscream until he’d been successfully diverted from the dark path he was on and stuck amongst the weeds, so that Skyfire could start untangling the emotions and the anger and the sadness and bring him back to a lighter path. One they could walk together. 

One that they had walked together. 

Skyfire was no stranger to ‘Before’s. But having a Before specifically for Starscream--that was new. He wasn’t sure he liked it. He was… getting too old for this shit, he’d heard one of the grounder soldiers grumble earlier that cycle. Or rather, ‘day’. He’d have to get used to that. The local wildlife here called them ‘days’. Adjusting was always the hardest part of a new ‘Now’.

He kept catching sight of himself in reflective surfaces, attention snapping to the purple paint on his wings that he just couldn’t quite reconcile with himself yet. He’d get used to it eventually, the same way he’d gotten used to the red markings of the Scientific Academies the last time he’d woken up and discovered everything he’d known was now ‘Before’, but it would take  _ time _ . 

Adjusting to the ‘Now’ of Starscream on the other hand… 

Before Starscream hadn’t needed a lot of prodding, and while winding his way through the complicated maze of Starscream’s thoughts had never exactly been  _ easy _ they’d always managed somehow. Now Starscream wasn’t just wandering down dark paths, he was seeking them out deliberately, and when Skyfire attempted to untangle his thoughts, he wasn’t being met with twisty turns and double backs, all he was getting was dead ends. Closed doors. Flat stares and scowls and “You’re smarter than  _ that _ , Skyfire,” with a dismissive flick of his wings. 

The worst bit was that Before Starscream was still  _ there _ . Skyfire could see it as plain as the wings on his back--none of Starscream’s airforce had the original armour energon seekers were onlined with; they’d all had plating replaced and reinforced with actual battle-grade armour, but Starscream didn’t even have that. He’d kept the atmospheric-graded plating of an exploratory scientific assistant. 

Skyfire had tried to joke about it, gentle, warm, and had gotten the only actual reaction out of Starscream he’d seen in the last three cyc-- _ days _ . Snarling anger covered by a veneer of dismissiveness, his field ugly and uncontrolled with that layered flare of stewing emotional processes that had been trimmed or terminated instead of resolved. A snapped explanation that the plating he’d had installed was more protective than standard military grade while being lighter, so why would he add one more drain on their preciously limited resources to  _ downgrade _ himself?

But even as he turned there was the slightest uptick to his mouth, the smallest circular flicking of the tip of his wing that he’d always done when he was pleased Skyfire had noticed something he wanted him to notice--

Skyfire rubbed the purple insignia on his wing absentmindedly, watching Starscream tinker with something he’d stolen from someone else’s lab on the floor below the command deck, remembering vividly coming back to their campus hab before they left to investigate the Sol-9 system planets on that fateful trip. Starscream had been so frustrated with the adjustments the Academy’s allocation department had seen fit to make to their usual model of energon recycler that he’d forged a code signature to get access to their allotment early so that he could fix what they’d flubbed. 

“You’ll scratch the paint,” said Starscream without looking up, and Skyfire twitched a small smile, lowering his hand again. 

“You’ll fix it,” he said, quietly confident. 

Starscream’s eyes flicked up at that, a soft red glow directed at him without any movement of the helm. “Will I?” he said, tone just as soft, before his gaze slowly drifted back down to whatever it was he was tampering with. 

Without realising it, Skyfire’s hand drifted back up to his wing. 


	3. Realign

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 3: Loneliness/Gentleness

The day after Starscream had been refitted with his brand new Academy funded plating he could barely move. His cables were locked up and throbbing where they connected to his protoform, sensitive from the new panel attachments and unused to the weight. His _wings_ felt too heavy, his damn _wings_ \--how was he supposed to travel with lightness and efficiency like this?

He wasn’t, of course. All in the name of scientific progress and a better future for himself. 

This would probably go easier if he was in alt. The plating wouldn’t be lying on top of itself while his sensors recalibrated, and it would stretch the cables that were folded in on themselves while releasing the ones currently pulled taut. There was a part of his processor desperately trying to track all of the pain and it flared with warning as the lines of thought crossed his mind. Starscream found it easy to dismiss, the idea of being able to escape the strut-deep aches for a while too alluring to ignore. 

Starscream vented deeply and fired the mechanism of his t-cog as the door to the hab suite slid open. 

He missed the noise of the door in his own strangled noises and the wave of pain, but couldn’t miss the surge of Skyfire’s field as he crossed the room. Skyfire was saying something that Starscream couldn’t quite parse through the rattling of his plating and his own harsh vents, and his heavy hands stroked slowly down Starscream’s plating. 

Starscream jerked away as best he could, flinching reflexively at the touch, but after a moment he realised that the heavy warm strokes were actually helping, soothing, and he shuddered, sinking back down as Skyfire’s words started to filter through. “—to settle, all the systems are syncing, and your frame wasn’t built to take this kind of—”

“I _know_ ,” rasped Starscream, the pain fraying his already short fuse even more, frustration making his field fluctuate wildly as he tried to stay still. 

Skyfire shifted, a blur of white and red paint in the smeared mess that was Starscream’s optical field, before settling on Starscream’s other side and wrapping him up in soft pressure of plating. Starscream hissed with the initial jostling, but after a moment the soreness subsided and Starscream gave up, relaxing into the embrace. 

“Go easy on yourself,” said Skyfire in a soft tone, shifting the frequency of his field to mesh with Starscream’s, the feeling smoothing over some of Starscream’s raw edges. “Try and run a defrag; you’re going to be down while you adjust and it’s good to let yourself adjust to the physical changes with a clean slate.”

Starscream groaned. Skyfire wasn’t _wrong_ , damn him, but it was always such a pain to shut down all his processes—

“Can you even focus on anything right now? Run the defrag, I’m not going anywhere” said Skyfire in an amused tone. 

Starscream didn’t dignify him with a response, terminating everything and initiating the defrag, safe in the comfort of Skyfire’s hold and field. In the haze of integration it almost felt like the warmth followed him into unconsciousness.

* * *

When Starscream onlined again, the hab suite he’d claimed was dark and cold. He blinked at the ceiling, testing the new focus of the targeting modifications, relishing in how much faster it was now that he could _tell_ beyond the ache. His HUD was blinking with notifications, and Starscream dismissed the one telling him his defrag was complete before addressing the upgraded systems notices. The hookups under his plating for the new weapons systems were already operating within idle parameters as well he noted as he sat up. 

Just to test he ran the sidearms, watching the guns flip out and back in twice before testing the null rays. They were positioned awkwardly in his root, but still very usable. He’d have to run a full systems check from alt to make sure it had aligned and integrated completely with no issues—the only meaningful downside of running your own upgrades, really, was that you had to monitor every specialised system on your own. 

Alt test. Starscream hesitated before he activated his transformation sequence, feeling strangely cold, and his plating ruffled reflexively as he scowled around him. There were sufficient mounds of military waffle on why trines were supposed to hab together and all of it was bunk. Starscream had been sufficient on his own for _years_ ; he didn’t need some musty functionalist psychobabble about squad efficiency to tell him how best to run his unit. What was he even still doing in root?

He shook his plating out to dislodge the cold feeling, flaring his EM field, and ran the transformation sequence on his battle ready frame for the first time.


	4. Inside Turn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 6: "Redemption/Betrayal" & Day 7: free space!

This was  _ unacceptable _ . 

Megatron snarled as he swung around in battle to correct for Starscream’s mistake  _ again _ . He’d always been a conniving, plotting little  _ tool _ of a flier but for the entire time they’d been running this shitshow he’d not once managed to be so  _ grossly incompetent _ !

It was that damn shuttle--ever since they’d found the enormous relic under that slab of ice and rock fall at the southernmost point of this cursed planet it was as though Starscream’s entire processor had jammed every signal it received. Conflicts among his command staff were nothing new; Pit, conflicts between Starscream and his own  _ airforce _ weren’t new. This? This was like nothing Megatron had seen before. Distracted Starscream, starving Starscream, ill-rested Starscream, preoccupied Starscream, angry Starscream,  _ plotting _ Starscream--Megatron thought he’d seen every side Starscream had including the ones he thought he kept hidden. This was different.

Even his  _ flying _ was off. 

Starscream didn’t fly like the other seekers. He was heavier, he had different training, he didn’t fly trine formations, he shot differently because his weapons modifications were different to account for the structure of his heavy duty coolant regulation systems--in truth, he was the first flier Megatron had met who used liquid cooling, it fascinated him more than he cared to admit--

Megatron had spent altogether too much time logging exactly how Starscream flew compared to the other members of the Decepticon airforce. This? This was not how Starscream flew. Megatron shifted into his second alt with a flood of fuel to his rear thrusters, abandoning his spat with Prime’s little blue bit of oil sludge in a way that prompted a shouted curse and a clumsy dodge. 

He ignored it, shooting across the battlefield at a carelessly low altitude to plug the hole Starscream had just left in their rear guard, sending Autobots in every direction. This had been a spectacularly risky venture to begin with and, like predicted, the Autobots had moved to cut off the only exit for their ground forces pretty much immediately. He was going to  _ throttle _ Starscream once he got his hands on him. 

The section of the Autobot army that was focused on bottlenecking them was not prepared to deal with Megatron directly and most of them scattered as he dove for the ground in front of them, transforming to root on the way down and firing several times with a roaring battle-cry. The trines that Starscream had abandoned rallied behind Megatron’s leadership, punching a hole in the Autobot forces. 

Megatron immediately pinged Soundwave, and the call for the Decepticons to fall back went over every active communication band. Megatron ignored his forces and shifted to go straight for Starscream where he was batting about in the air with that be-damned  _ shuttle _ . 

He stopped under the rolling fliers and didn’t bother to yell or join them, instead activating the charge to his cannon and firing it at the lowest pulse, aimed at Starscream. Starscream, occupied by trying to herd Skyfire through the air, ignored the pulse for the warning shot that it was, simply filling his comm band to Megatron with obscene glyphs. Skyfire on the other hand jerked in the air, his EM field flaring wildly with shock, and he spun in a dip Megatron hadn’t ever seen performed by any vehicle larger than a seeker, shielding Starscream with his body. Starscream’s obscenities were vocalised this time, spat through the air with the screech of static that accompanied his voice when he was in alt. 

Skyfire twisted tightly in the air, but instead of pulling up the way Megatron had seen fliers do so often, he aimed himself at Megatron and picked up speed, his plating sliding and tamping down in a way that indicated he was bracing for impact. 

Megatron roared and directed more power to his cannon, the whine of it charging kicking up another four or so notches on his HUD. Starscream shrieked and shot across the sky on an intersecting angle, slamming into Skyfire’s side and pushing him off course. They hit the ground in root and Megatron kept his cannon aimed on Skyfire, maintaining the charge. 

“YOU have not earned the right to that kind of insubordination!” he bellowed, shifting the cannon to keep it pointed at Skyfire even as Starscream scrambled to get between them. 

“Don’t you  _ dare _ I am  _ handling it _ !” shrieked Starscream, flaring his wing plating like it could conceivably shield Skyfire’s bulk. “You don’t meddle in my airforce!”

“When your airforce is  _ functioning _ you can run it how you wish!” snapped Megatron, swinging the cannon around once more. “This has gotten out of hand! Either you pull him in line or I will end this  _ right here and now _ !”

“You are a disgusting excuse of a Cybertronian,” spat Skyfire over Starscream’s head. “You lead through fear--”

Megatron snarled, bringing the cannon to bear on Skyfire as Starscream made another shrieking noise, and then--

“ _ MEGATRON! _ ”

Slagging  _ Prime _ \--Megatron swung around, scowling at the interfering Autobot commander as he approached. “I am  _ busy _ !” he snapped. 

Prime ignored him, addressing the insubordinate shuttle behind Starscream instead. “Skyfire, I am once again offering you asylum with the Autobots. You’ve seen how the Decepticons operate--”

Skyfire’s eyes were on Starscream and his hesitation was so brief Megatron wasn’t entirely sure he’d actually seen it. “I accept,” he said, stepping around Starscream. 

Starscream’s shriek was so high-pitched that it shorted something in Megatron’s audial receivers. “ _ No! _ ” he howled, his null rays onlining as his engine kicked up to a gear Megatron heard so rarely he automatically took a step back. Starscream’s field was such a roiling mess Megatron could swear he felt the heat of backed up processes overclocking his emotional core.

Skyfire glanced at Megatron, everything about him daring Megatron to fire on him, and then turned back to face Starscream. “You  _ know _ it doesn’t have to be like this,” he said, his voice weighty with implication. 

“It  _ does _ ,” snarled Megatron in case Starscream got any  _ ideas _ from whatever Skyfire was referencing. “You have done  _ nothing _ but hold your commander back since you were uncovered and I should have taken care of you then and there!”

Starscream shrieked again, a sound so full of static that it nearly masked the fact his heel thrusters had fired. “You absolute  _ pathetic _ bucket of half-processed  _ smelt _ !” he howled, null rays locking onto Megatron in a familiar, impotent show of rage. “ _ You interfering muckraker! This is your FAULT!” _

Cold fury pumped through Megatron’s fuel lines and he turned his anger onto Starscream. “I should have listened to your subordinates!” he roared, turning the barrel of the cannon on Starscream. “They  _ warned _ me you were glitching out and they were  _ right _ !”

Starscream’s optics flared, his field bursting with a complex peak Megatron couldn’t quite interpret, and then he pulled it back in, shooting past him towards Skyfire. “Then good luck getting any useful command out of the useless bunch!” he screamed, clinging to Skyfire’s arm. 

“Uh, hang on, that’s not what we--” said one of the Autobots behind Prime, suddenly realising what was happening in front of them. 

“Your wings are going to hang over my throne,” promised Megatron, activating his own thrusters and pushing himself back into the air as he started the transformation process for his second alt again. A null ray sailed over his wing as he locked into place and shot off, and he could feel that damn shuttle’s gaze watching him as he followed after his army, now down one air commander. 

This was going to necessitate some rearrangements. Soundwave was going to hate it. He’d have to live with that. Megatron went over the structure of his airforce in his processor, and commed ahead to let all concerned parties know of the new chain of command. That done, he cut off all notifications from incoming communication bands so that he could fly off his anger in peace. 

See how Prime liked the conniving little bastard when he was in  _ his _ face all the damn time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we hit the "AU" part of the AU! I needed some good internal Decepticon conflict here for the sake of plot, how very convenient of Skyfire to provide some :p Main Sandbox stories are a little ways off, I've got some other stuff that needs my attention right now, but thank you for reading along with me and I hope we've all had a good SkyStar week!

**Author's Note:**

> So this first fic in this series uses most of the prompts for the week and works almost as a teaser of sorts for my big Sandbox AU I'm working on. It's kind of G1 adjacent but I rifled through a bunch of other continuities to find characters I liked and then shook it up with my own flavours of TF worldbuilding. I have many thoughts about both Starscream and Skyfire for this AU so I'm 100% using this as an excuse to expand on them, I hope you enjoy! :D


End file.
